what the fuck is wrong with WMP?

anybody have any fucking clue why the cunting fuck *any* attempt to activate Windows Media Player - either by double clicking it, choosing it from a menu, or as part of reinstalling it - bricks the computer totally. No matter what. In XP.

And, yes, I've rolled it back, uninstalled it, reinstalled it, tried different versions of it, cleaned the registry, cleared out the library files, CCleaned it up the arse, you fucking name it, and no matter what it still just will not fucking start, and *always* bricks the computer.

And don't tell me to use fucking VLC either cos that shit won't fucking play a whole album for me, just one track, and in any case I need WMP to work in order to stream music through the 360.

When you say "brick", that usually means the computer won't even turn on anymore. If that's happening, you have a serious problem beyond WMP. A previous PC I had had problems with the soundcard that would cause strange crashes in Windows from time to time. You might trying buying a $20 sound card and installing it to see if it makes any difference.

Well, I say Media Player is working now but that's just on the computer. It won't stream to the 360 cos it keeps saying media sharing has been turned off, and turning it on won't stick. And, yes, I've done all the making sure it starts automatically, and has the right registry and ownership, and deleted and reset the library, and all that fucking shit that a google search for "media sharing has been turned off because a windows component is missing or changed" brings up.

Totally with sojourner and Ar-Pharazon. If you can upgrade to Windows 7, do so. It's well worth it. That said, if you've followed these instructions, and you're still not getting anything to work, you may have something blocking it like an antivirus program, or firewall.

I finally tracked the problem down to needing to go to the services box, and change the properties of WMP to "local service" then stop and restart it. For some reason when I'd reinstalled it, it had gone in as being a network thing needing a password...

So now I can share music from WMP to the 360 again, but it stops halfway through tracks, then skips the next one and tells me it's in an unsupported format even though it played them earlier, and they're fucking WMA files...

WMP is sometimes pain in the ass, it can be ok depending if you're doing just music or just dvds but if its giving you trouble and wasting your time then just use an alternative VLC, Realplayer, Divx, Kaffeine, Winamp or just plain old media player classic....the newer version of VLC's should play you a whole album and I tend to agree with the apple macbook freaks and windows7 fans sometimes an alternative operating system is the way to go. If you won't change your system change your player at least, you can download a whole load of very good alternative players for free

So, I try to stream music from WMP on an XP machine running SP3 to my Xbox 360. Said streamed music stops randomly, and skips over at least the next track every time it does so. What the cunting fuck is going on? And this only started after I got WMP reinstalled this week - it always worked fine before.

I use the KMplayer :P Works great for me, AND if you have one song that's quiet and one that's super loud, it equalizes. No fiddling with the volume between songs. It'll also play a wide variety of video formats without a problem.

Come on interwebz, somebody must have some idea what the cunting fuck is going on with this (but even my google-fu fails me):
I’m running XP, service pack 3, WMP 11, with all the sharing settings set up right. For several years, I’ve happily plugged one end of an Ethernet cable into the Xbox 360 and the other end into this machine, and played the albums stored in the My Music folder through the 360 and out the TV speakers.
For the past month or so, however – since having to reinstall WMP 11 after a bad update killed it – I do that exact thing, and instead of happily hearing all the album play through the 360 and out the TV speakers, I hear one track, maybe two, then the 360 stops halfway through a (usually the second or third) track, skips the next track or two, and continues randomly in this fashion, playing some tracks and not others. If I try to select the track that stopped or one that was skipped, the 360 claims this track is an unknown file format, but if I start playing the *previous* track, then hit the “next track” arrow, it’ll play it. And then may or may not stop halfway through, pretty much at random.
So, what the fucking hell is causing this? And how the fuck can I get it playing the whole album again?
And, no, it’s not the 360 at fault in and of itself, cos it doesn’t do this with CDs or albums on its hard drive.